Google Analytics vs. Mixpanel vs. PostgreSQL

Honesty, there is no reason that a company wouldn’t want to implement Google Analytics. The regular version is completely free, is very easy to configure, and provides immense volumes of website data. There are also tangible benefits to the other Google tools it can connect to, and it integrates with any BI/data platform that you might use. The only time I’d advise not using standard Google Analytics is if you’ve purchased Google Analytics 360.

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Mixpanel is a versatile platform that integrates features to connect every work team and get the best out of them in productivity and results. Moreover, it will improve the flow of information and interaction between all your company staff; it will unify and help promote collaboration between the different work areas. Without a doubt, I highly recommend this software

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Based on my experience, PostgreSQL is exactly what I imagine when thinking of a relational database: it is fast for querying and intuitive (if the underlying relations have been well written) and its writes are also efficient. Of course you need to know that a relational database is what you need, for example I would not recommend it if you have a lot of unstructured data that have no way to create a relation from and if you need to run heavy aggregations over your data, as it is not where PostgreSQL would shine.

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• Multiple reports to see website use and behavior
• Allows you to customize reports with days, weeks, months, and years
• You can build out a dashboard to easily view stats from multiple websites in one place
• You can share analytics reports via the dashboard, automatically emailed PDFs or in other formats

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• Mixpanel's ease of use is easily their best feature, allowing you to quickly create graphs with a few point and clicks. Their UI is also fairly snappy and well-designed.
• Tying together events with user attributes allows you to properly segment users into cohorts which can then be tracked individually. Proper segmentation is where most analytics solutions earn their keep.
• Live view is a nice perk that gives you a good feel for who's on your site and what they're doing at any single point in time. This can be further filtered to focus on particular events of interest.
• Mixpanel has flexible plans that work for smaller startups as well.
• Their documentation is top notch.

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• The stability it offers, its speed of response and its resource management is excellent even in complex database environments and with low-resource machines.
• The large amount of resources it has in addition to the many own and third-party tools that are compatible that make productivity greatly increase.
• The adaptability in various environments, whether distributed or not, [is a] complete set of configuration options which allows to greatly customize the work configuration according to the needs that are required.
• The excellent handling of referential and transactional integrity, its internal security scheme, the ease with which we can create backups are some of the strengths that can be mentioned.

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• While raw data is nice to have, I do wish there was an easier way to provide reports from Google Analytics directly. Something that could answer questions straight-forward for people.
• I would appreciate "helpful hints" or a cheat sheet of some sort, so when quickly searching for something such as time on a certain page, I can find it quickly.
• I really don't have a third point!

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• I didn't use the engagement features at all but it seems like they could have a better WYSIWYG editor for the emails for non-technical people using Mixpanel.
• The custom reports feature seems to be really powerful but I wish they had more resources/templates for creating custom reports. I don't code so it was really hard for me to use this feature...BUT the reports I was able to get help with, were really powerful.
• I wanted a dashboard area for all of my reports in one view. It seems like they were implementing this when I was moving jobs. If it's not available yet, they definitely need to add a master dashboard page for arranging saved reports.

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• The query syntax for JSON fields is unwieldy when you start getting into complex queries with many joins.
• I wish there was a distinction (a flag) you could set for automated scripts vs working in the psql CLI, which would provide an 'Are you sure you want to do X?' type prompt if your query is likely to affect more than a certain number of rows. Especially on updates/deletes. Setting the flag in the headless(scripted) flow would disable the prompt.
• Better documentation around JSON and Array aggregation, with more examples of how the data is transformed.

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Having used Google Analytics for the last 9 years, I have no intention of discontinuing my service. Google Analytics is a fantastic product that provides me with almost everything I could wish for. The positives in this product outweigh any negatives that you might find. I can not think of a single reason to not immediately start using Google Analytics for your business.

It's not an all encompassing solution like Google Analytics tries to be, but MixPanel offers much easier to use and understandable data insights. That's valuable when juggling many responsibilities as startup life demands, so a renewal would be easily justified.

As a needed software for day to day development activities

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Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements

Relativity easy to use. Once you get the hang of it, very easy to create dashboards for different use cases. I split my dashboards between customers or use cases

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Postgresql is the best tool out there for relational data so I have to give it a high rating when it comes to analytics, data availability and consistency, so on and so forth. SQL is also a relatively consistent language so when it comes to building new tables and loading data in from the OLTP database, there are enough tools where we can perform ETL on a scalable basis.

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We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.

PostgreSQL's availability is top notch. Apart from connection time-out for an idle user, the database is super reliable.

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This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics

The data queries are relatively quick for a small to medium sized table. With complex joins, and a wide and deep table however, the performance of the query has room for improvement.

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The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.

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There is no support at all for free-plan users. There used to be a good support but something changed. If everything had gone great we could've considered upgrading but it is so bad that we'll look for an alternative once we finish the current project. Given that the documentation is very poor, there are some aspects in which customer support could have helped a lot, but with no support, we are left with some needs unfulfilled.

There are several companies that you can contract for technical support, like EnterpriseDB or Percona, both first level in expertise and commitment to the software.

But we do not have contracts with them, we have done all the way from googling to forums, and never have a problem that we cannot resolve or pass around. And for dozens of projects and more than 15 years now.

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love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.

1. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
2. A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
3. Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
4. Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
5. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
6. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.

Mixpanel has a great resource about their product, with videos on how to use it and real world examples from other companies on how they integrate Mixpanel into their business processes.

The online training is request based. Had there been recorded videos available online for potential users to benefit from, I could have rated it higher. The online documentation however is very helpful. The online documentation PDF is downloadable and allows users to pace their own learning. With examples and code snippets, the documentation is great starting point.

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Make sure to put the tracking code on every page. Ideally this would be part of a template or "include" so you can update the code on all pages (or at least within pages of the same category) at once.

Mixpanel is a simple JS script installation. For adding events to track, its simply a matter of adding the code where you want it. Their API and documentation are easy to understand and use.

The online documentation of the PostgreSQL product is elaborate and takes users step by step.

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I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.

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Datanomix is an excellent tool, with similar characteristics; however, Mixpanel has been our preference for two main reasons: one, to have customization and to be able to adapt the interface and tools to our use, and two, to be able to count on reports that it automates the work of sales analysis and being able to evaluate progress.

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In my experience using all of these products over many years, PostgreSQL is better than any of them in reliability, performance, productivity, cost, scalability and interoperability across operating systems.

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Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions

The DB is reliable, scalable, easy to use and resolves most DB needs

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• Great for visualizing website drop-off pages to theories and test update/iterations.
• Bounce rates on pages to pinpoint bugs and issues.
• Inaccuracy can lead to incorrect conclusions and decisions around CRO.
• Segments can be very useful for validating split testing, providing a free tracking of variation vs. control - great ROI.

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• User event data has helped us improve our product, which has increased subscriptions.
• Being able to send helpful messages to some users who drop off after certain events has helped us reduce our churn.
• We have been able to identify the Monthly super-active users, understand their usage of our product, which we use to conduct focus groups to help us shape the product.

Incentivized

• A robust and reliable platform reduces the risk of data loss and confusion.
• Using an almost free product is economical. No license fees = minimal ownership cost.
• Efficiency is high due to quickness and excellent resource management.
• PostgreSQL helps us achieve our goals, and there are no time-consuming management tasks.